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Amazon’s Stock Price Doubles in 17 Months

Amazon’s stock price doubled in a year and five months, closing at an all time high on Thursday. The Amazon stock price rise comes from strong ROI. The company’s shares blew past $800 a share for the first time, ending at a record share price of $804.70. That leaves Amazon with a market cap of more than $380 billion. That’s more than double its value in late April of 2015. In that month, Amazon’s shares topped $400 a share for the first time ever. Amazon is now the fourth largest company in the world by market cap. That leaves the online retailer behind only Apple, Google parent company Alphabet and Microsoft.

The Amazon Stock Price Juggernaut

A graph of the runaway Amazon Stock price jump in 2016 looks like a trajectory map of one of founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rockets. In February the company’s shares sold for about $550. A tech market collapse in that month temporarily knocked the share price down into the sub-$500 range, but the stock rebounded to over $700 for the first time in May of 2016. At least part of the stock’s success comes thanks to Amazon’s persistent dominance and growth in both the cloud computing and e-commerce business. Last year the company took in more than $100 billion in revenue. That’s a new record for Amazon. Maybe the most impressive thing about it is that the company still managed a 30% growth rate. 30% is an amazing growth rate for a small company, but it’s stunning for a company the size of Amazon to maintain that level year over year.

Image source: Yahoo Finance

Amazon Stock Price and ROA

Maybe the most notable thing about the Amazon stock price rise is what it’s based on. The online seller seems to have a singular knack for taking a small amount of assets and turning that into profit. In simple terms, one dollar owned by the company can produce a lot more than a dollar out. The traditional method for figuring Return on Assets put Amazon’s ROA at 2.3%. Investment research firm Valens puts it at a much higher 12.2%. Valens has re-figured the financials of thousands of publicly traded companies. The company uses forensic accounting to promote deep understanding of stock value. In a nutshell, they correct all the accounting anomalies that muddy the waters of financial reports. The Valens graph below shows a much higher ROA for Amazon than what’s generally believed.